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Episode 215 - 2024 Post-TPF

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 10m·analyzed·Mar 18, 2024
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TL;DR

TPF 2024 post-show review: new layouts praised, Jaws/Labyrinth standouts, Spooky build quality concerns.

Summary

At Texas Pinball Festival 2024, hosts Tony and Dennis review newly released and prototype pinball machines. They praise Jaws for solid gameplay despite theme indifference, Labyrinth for exceptional polish and theme integration as a first release, and Elton John for powerful mechanics. They criticize Spooky's Looney Tunes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre for flipper failures and complex rules, while Venom impresses with experimental rule depth but basic layout. Dutch Pinball achievement completing early preorders after years receives recognition.

Key Claims

  • Dutch Pinball has completed all early preorder backlog from years ago by selling only the Big Lebowski

    high confidence · Tony explicitly states 'Dutch Pinball, makers of the Big Lebowski, have finally completed all of their early adopter – early achiever, I think was the name of the category – all the preorders from years and years ago' and 'they have caught it all the way up.'

  • TPF 2024 has a new layout and different management than previous years

    high confidence · Dennis notes 'TPF is under new management is my understanding. that Ed, I saw Ed for Friday, the first day of the show, and he may still be helping with it, but he's not the primary planner anymore.'

  • Texas Chainsaw Massacre experienced upper flipper failures during gameplay at TPF

    high confidence · Both hosts confirm upper flippers on Texas Chainsaw failed mid-game: 'the upper flippers on the ballooning tunes we were playing failed' and Tony confirms 'Tony's flipping, but his upper flippers aren't moving at all.'

  • Elton John Jersey Jack uses new I.O. boards with larger capacitors for better power delivery

    medium confidence · Dennis states 'they've – I guess they have new I.O. boards, which, long story short, are basically just a way to install bigger capacitors so that there's less issues with the power levels actually dropping'

  • Texas Chainsaw Massacre flipper failure may be due to untested modes programmed for TPF

    medium confidence · Dennis notes 'someone else had told me that there are a lot of modes that got put in in time for TPF, but they weren't really tested. That wasn't someone with a company, but someone who purportedly talked to someone on the programming team, who I believe.'

  • Attendance at TPF 2024 was noticeably down compared to previous years

    high confidence · Tony states 'attendance did feel noticeably down, but I can't tell if it's just down because it's down or if it's a combination of down and the new layout making things work better' due to weather (Blizzard cancellations) and economic factors.

  • Labyrinth is the first game from Barrels of Fun and does not feel like a first release

Notable Quotes

  • “we did not think that company was going to survive. No, I didn't think it would happen. And they have, and they have caught it all the way up. selling only that one game, which is shocking to me, but they've done it. So congratulations to Dutch Pinball.”

    Tony and Dennis @ Early in episode — Recognition of Dutch Pinball's remarkable survival and achievement completing backlog with single game

  • “This doesn't seem like a company's first game this It seems like a company that's been at this a while.”

    Dennis @ Labyrinth discussion — Indicates Barrels of Fun's exceptional execution on debut title

  • “I'm going to say I was somewhat surprised just because I wasn't sure, given what I've experienced with other Jersey Jack games...No. It's weird because, obviously, it is a Jersey Jack. And I've heard that they've – I guess they have new I.O. boards...But Elton John, I guess, has all that. And so it just – it feels powerful”

    Dennis @ Elton John discussion — Technical explanation of Elton John's superior flipper feel vs past Jersey Jack games

  • “The layout is incredibly basic, though. I stand by, I think, one of my early statements when we covered it, when it was revealed, was the fanniest fan to ever fan, and it is.”

    Dennis @ Venom discussion — Criticism of Venom's simplistic playfield layout despite rule depth

  • “unfortunately, that didn't leave a terrible impression, but it kind of left the stereotypical impression of, oh, yes, it's a spooky. It's not going to work right.”

    Dennis @ Texas Chainsaw flipper failure discussion — References Spooky's reputation for build quality issues

  • “I don't think I'd ever buy a Texas Chainsaw Massacre. No, I mean, the one thing is the ideas behind the in a homeowner environment. I think I might have more fun with Texas rules and that would probably be enough on location. I would easily say get a Looney Tunes if you're going to get one of these two.”

    Tony and Dennis @ Spooky game comparison — Clear recommendation against Texas Chainsaw despite interesting rules

Entities

Dutch PinballcompanyBarrels of FuncompanyStern PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyMarco SpecialtiescompanyTexas Pinball FestivaleventTonypersonDennis

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Dutch Pinball's successful completion of multi-year preorder backlog selling single game title demonstrates niche market viability

    high · Tony and Dennis express surprise: 'we did not think that company was going to survive...they have caught it all the way up. selling only that one game, which is shocking to me'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Spooky Pinball's build quality reputation reinforced negatively despite Looney Tunes design improvements

    high · Dennis states: 'that didn't leave a terrible impression, but it kind of left the stereotypical impression of, oh, yes, it's a spooky. It's not going to work right.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Venom's layout described as 'the fanniest fan to ever fan'; basic playfield compared unfavorably despite rule system innovation

    high · Dennis: 'The layout is incredibly basic, though. I stand by...the fanniest fan to ever fan, and it is.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Clear host preference for simpler, more accessible rules (90s-style) vs complex modern rule sets; location play vs home collection distinction

    high · Tony contrasts wanting '90s rules' on location (Looney Tunes) vs home willingness to 'nerd out' on complex modes (Godzilla); mirrors tension between casual and competitive players

  • ?

    event_signal: TPF 2024 experienced attendance decline attributed to weather (Blizzard flight cancellations) and new venue layout improvements

    high · Tony: 'attendance did feel noticeably down' and Dennis notes new management brought layout changes and traffic flow improvements

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.212

0:00
Welcome back, yet again, to the Eclectic Gamers podcast. Today is Sunday, the 17th of March. This is episode 215. My name is Tony. I am Dennis, and we're about to leave TPF. We're in the hotel room getting our recording done, so hopefully the audio is okay. This may obviously drop about a day later. We'll see. We gave that warning last episode. And, of course, now the warning is pointless because it's too late to do anything about it. But thanks to our supporters on Patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers, we always do try and focus very explicitly at this point on covering all the games that we haven't yet had a chance to play. I try and get in line on all the new commercially made stuff. But before diving into that, I wanted to note that one news item that I saw, Dutch Pinball, makers of the Big Lebowski, have finally completed all of their early adopter – early achiever, I think was the name of the category – all the preorders from years and years ago. And when that was all happening, we did not think that company was going to survive. No, I didn't think it would happen. And they have, and they have caught it all the way up. selling only that one game, which is shocking to me, but they've done it. So congratulations to Dutch Pinball. Yeah, I'm impressed. I did not expect it. Yeah, yeah. We were incorrect. Maybe not the first time, but perhaps the last. Nah, probably not. Probably not. Okay. So in terms of Texas, I wanted to go ahead and we'll just go over the – I think last year we were able to do the show after we got back and we put together because we weren't recording at the event. Right, right, right. Because it was in between episodes last time. So this isn't going to be that structured. Apologies. But hopefully you guys get some fun details out of stuff. So I wanted to go ahead, though, and open with homebrew. We don't normally really cover homebrew because it's not commercial, so people aren't buying it. Valid. But we do usually try and play some homebrew games. Now, there are a couple that I wanted to play, but I'm going to say I'm old, and my tolerance for lines is not remotely what it used to be. And this show has a lot less lines. It does. I mean, compared to – Thank you, Snow. Yeah. And that's the thing. I mean, as we're going into the homebrew to talk about it, but that's one thing to mention is this year TPF has a completely different layout, and I feel like it feels more open and it flows better. But also, Blizzard's canceling lots of flights, and probably economic reasons as well have kept a lot of people from coming. So attendance did feel noticeably down, but I can't tell if it's just down because it's down or if it's a combination of down and the new layout making things work better. I think it's probably a combination, but it was definitely noticeable.

high confidence · Tony notes 'for being the first game put out by a company, it's shockingly good' and Dennis confirms 'This doesn't seem like a company's first game this It seems like a company that's been at this a while.'

  • Venom Premium/LE has progressive difficulty that increases timeouts for experienced players

    high confidence · Dennis explains 'as you play the game and you're scanned in and you get more experienced, the game actually gets harder. It has some things where they reduce how much time you have to complete some stuff compared to before'

    • “why did they make a pro if they couldn't have any of that in there? Because I'm not sure how fun it is when all of a sudden the rules change and that's it...It makes the Pro look very cheap.”

    Dennis @ Venom Pro/Premium discussion — Criticism of Stern's Pro tier differentiation on Venom

  • “I think in a home environment, Venom Premium or LE would be an excellent game. And there's a lot to really explore there. Location-wise, probably not.”

    Dennis @ Venom final assessment — Clear market positioning distinction for Venom

    • person
    Joel Engelberthperson
    Edperson
    Ben Heckperson
    Jaws 50th Anniversarygame
    Labyrinthgame
    Elton Johngame
    Looney Tunesgame
    Texas Chainsaw Massacregame
    Venomgame
    Princess Bridegame
    Rick and Mortygame
    Alice Coopergame
    8-Ball Beyondgame
    Animal Housegame
  • ?

    licensing_signal: License preference drives purchase intent; Tony prefers Princess Bride over Labyrinth despite Labyrinth's superior gameplay execution

    medium · Dennis notes opposite license preferences: 'So a license I like a lot better than Labyrinth. And you are the opposite.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Joel Engelberth demonstrated expertise in Venom's insider progression system; community knowledge gap between casual and specialist players

    medium · Joel guided hosts through character unlocking and level progression mechanics not intuitive to casual players; highlighted experiential divide

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern's Pro/Premium/LE tier strategy criticized as undifferentiated on Venom; Pro perceived as lacking innovation vs Premium character system

    high · Dennis questions 'why did they make a pro if they couldn't have any of that in there?' and concludes 'It makes the Pro look very cheap.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Upper flipper failures on Texas Chainsaw Massacre during TPF gameplay; hosts attribute to either build quality or untested software modes

    high · Multiple confirmations of flipper failure: 'the upper flippers on the ballooning tunes we were playing failed' and gameplay report showing flippers cut out mid-mode

  • ?

    technology_signal: Jersey Jack's new I.O. boards with larger capacitors addressing historic flipper power delivery issues

    medium · Dennis explains Elton John's superior flipper feel: 'new I.O. boards, which, long story short, are basically just a way to install bigger capacitors so that there's less issues with the power levels actually dropping'

    • 3:11
    Do you want to open with what we think of that? So TPF is under new management is my understanding. that Ed, I saw Ed for Friday, the first day of the show, and he may still be helping with it, but he's not the primary planner anymore. And so I'm assuming because there's new leadership in organizing the show, some new thoughts sort of came into play. Tony, you just mentioned the new layout approach. By and large, I think this new layout approach was a really smart decision. I do too. There is clearly far more space for foot traffic. I'm still going to ding them. Same thing for last year. They're doing too many of the like daisy petal hub style brand new games at the entrance way. Yeah, the entrance way is a little tight. It creates a slight bottleneck. Yes. Last year it was they did that with Pulp Fictions and it was hard to get in the room because Pulp Fiction was so in demand and the lines were so long for it that it was just a struggle to actually get into the actual conference space. and then this year they had Looney Tunes kind of, I think that was what was there Looney Tunes was kind of there it was like Looney Tunes a bank of amazingly shopped and modified games right in the middle the circle of awesome and then a company with a bunch of games and stuff they were selling just to the other side in terms of layout, that's my only criticism is I wish that I'm fine with that approach. It works really well over in the Marco booth to do it kind of hub style. It just needs to be further away from wherever they want to use as an entrance because they're not using the entrance they used to use. Right. They're using the center entrance on that west wall.
    5:02
    Honestly, I think the big thing was just if they could have arranged it so the circle of awesome was another five feet deeper into the space, it might have opened that area up enough to been okay yeah i think so uh it's just it was just close enough to the door but the but the truth of the matter is other than when it's first opening on fridays saturday and sunday mornings um it's not that big of a deal it doesn't slow things down too much it just gets a little problematic when you've got lines forming around right and it was not as bad as last year but i don't know that that was a configuration change versus there were enough of like a lot of these games like the circle of awesome are games by and large games that people have already known that's long story short it wasn't pulp fiction and so pulp it wasn't like where there were two hour queues for any of these things but anyway so and the only other criticism i have which doesn't have to do with the show configuration but i do not like that they are locking all of the doors except for the entrance over like by the food trucks or whatever to get into the building. This is discrimination against the Hilton and against the Drury. We're having to walk a lot further, and then we have to loop back down the hall towards where our hotels were because the entrance is no longer on that end by those food trucks. I did find that annoying, especially because, honestly, I think this was the rainiest TP we've ever been to. It easily is. I mean, because it was basically all day yesterday. It's rained every single day. We lucked out on not getting hit with any really bad weather. Yes, it all missed. It was just west of us. We could see it out the hotel room window.
    6:42
    Also, we're from Kansas, so we're used to thunderstorms, and we know tornado sirens and stuff. What I'm not used to is tornado sirens going off when there's no tornado. It wasn't even a tornado watch. Yeah, and there wasn't even a tornado watch, and we actually had to look it up because it wasn't the normal tornado sirens. It was the up and down one. The one that I've always been told, oh, that's the nukes are in the air. That's the airstrike, Cold War siren. But apparently down here in Dallas, at least, they use those alarms for any sufficiently bad weather that's not a tornado, which they were using it because there was baseball-sized hail dropping west of us. They didn't want people to be outside and get wounded. Which is underspoken. That's a great use of that alarm. That makes sense. I concur. Just as somebody from Kansas, we're in the room. There's one tornado or one siren, and it's for a tornado. Yeah, exactly. That's the one thing we care about. So we can all go stand outside and look at it. We just got back from dinner on Thursday night, and we're watching some TV and talking about stuff and kind of planning the weekend out. Also, tornado sirens start, and it's like, oh, it's going to be that weekend.
    7:57
    So homebrews. Two I did not get to play that I wanted to play. The first was Saw. I had been told about Saw ahead of time. That line for Saw was the worst one, though. Massive. And we went on Friday and Saturday, and we kept going over there. And there was always just groups of four and stuff just waiting, which is a good problem for them to have and a bad problem for me to have. And I want to clarify, it wasn't the worst line for the homebrew. It was the worst line, period, of the entire show. I never saw it not having 12 plus people there. We almost thought at one point, I thought there was a cluster of people maybe just talking off to the side, and then it was actually a group of four behind, I think another group of four behind the two people who were currently playing. Right. And it's just like, no, I don't have time. Right. So Friday the 13th was in a similar situation. But I was close enough to that one, and I was able to hear it. So the only homebrews I was able to play is I did play the Animal House. Yes. I was able to play that. and we played a couple of times 8-Ball Beyond. We did. Which I had been hearing very good things about. And if you like 8-Ball Deluxe or Bad Girls or Sharky Shooter, if you like any of those 8-Ball games,
    9:09
    that's a good one to try if you see it at a show. Yeah, I enjoyed it. It's basically just as hard as all.
    9:15
    I'd say maybe it's a little bit easier than 8-Ball Deluxe slightly just because of some of the show. But it's a hard game. I mean, it's a hard game. But it was interesting. Yeah, I enjoyed it. It had some neat effect and mode things, and I liked the – it had that little triangular stand-up in the corner that lit up to tell you, like, what you'd collected and what you were working on. That was kind of cool the way it worked, and I enjoyed it. So let's go ahead and jump into the commercial stuff because that's the stuff that people could buy. Right. So that's what they're going to be interested in. I'd like to open with Jaws because that was a game – I played the pro on location. You had not yet had a chance to play Jaws. I have not had a chance. So we went and we played a premium because that was new to both of us. Yes. What were your takeaways on it? I enjoyed it. I did not miss the shark eating the ball at all, but I really enjoyed it. The premium, at least, I thought was a lot of fun.
    10:14
    The pros, I'm sure, are a lot of fun as well, perhaps even more so because that tends to be the rule that the pros pretty much – There's a few of them where it's the other way around, but for the most part I feel like the pros get everything done that you'd want to get done. But I really enjoyed it. That game, I've been on record saying I never really cared for the theme, and I'm still not. I don't really care for the theme. It doesn't do anything special for me.
    10:41
    But the game itself was fun and enjoyable. The shots felt good. I definitely didn't have any negative takeaways from it. yeah i uh i enjoyed it i'd already enjoyed the i had a few games on the jaws pro before uh upper playfield didn't really do it for me i've heard some others feel they they like it a lot yeah it didn't it i didn't dislike it you aren't up there long so that that solves what is often a you know my like my game of thrones premium problem where i feel like you are up there for a little while but overall yeah it's an enjoyable game i would probably say of all the games that i played And in terms of the complete package of the quote-unquote newish stuff, it's probably the best in my opinion. But a lot of people disagree because there were a lot of interesting games there. There were.
    11:33
    Labyrinth, let's jump to that one. Because speaking of games that people really liked, you had a very positive reaction to Labyrinth. I did. But, I mean, once again, for me this falls like Godzilla did where it's the theme I've got. It's a theme I enjoy. It's a theme I love. And then combined with the fact that the gameplay itself is actually really good and the polish on that game, for being the first game put out by a company,
    12:01
    it's shockingly good. It felt good. It shot well. It looked beautiful. it didn't feel like it had the same kind of little missteps that you typically see in a first game i i like the whole package i enjoyed everything about it yeah i i didn't love it uh it's i would say of all the games though its theme integration was the best one of all of the new stuff oh easily it looks it looks so good and it was what you mentioned was a very common refrain with people we spoke to about labyrinth which was this doesn't seem like a company's first game this It seems like a company that's been at this a while. Right. And it did shoot well. Maybe if I loved the theme more. But gameplay-wise, it was good.
    12:47
    There's not a single thing I would complain about the game. It was just – I don't know. It just didn't resonate with me in a way where I'd be like – I'd be out buying it. But I would say if you like Labyrinth, you definitely should try it and see if you like the gameplay because the way the game looks is great. Yeah, it definitely qualifies as one of those games that would look good turned off in your game room. Oh, yes, yes, yes. The wells under glass. There's a well. Very much. Very wildly in there. And so, yeah, that one, visually, it was definitely the most impressive. I'd say visually the second most impressive one I would cite would probably be Elton John, which we played the first day. Right, yeah. It shot incredibly well. It did. I thought it would, given what the layout looked like and knowing who worked on it. But, yeah, it didn't.
    13:38
    I'm going to say I was somewhat surprised just because I wasn't sure, given what I've experienced with other Jersey Jack games. I thought, well, the layout looks great, but is it going to flip like a Jersey Jack, like the mechanics and stuff? No.
    13:55
    It's weird because, obviously, it is a Jersey Jack. And I've heard that they've – I guess they have new I.O. boards, which, long story short, are basically just a way to install bigger capacitors so that there's less issues with the power levels actually dropping and the flippers getting weaker or feeling – anyways, electricity thing. But Elton John, I guess, has all that. And so it just – it feels powerful is maybe the way I would say it. So – and it's a visual spectacle. It is. No, it felt good. It looked good. I couldn't really hear it, unfortunately. That was my biggest concern. And that's just the show. Oh, yeah. I don't hold that against the game. Yeah, I'm not going to hold that against the game.
    14:37
    Because even stuff that's turned up enough that you can kind of hear, there's so much noise going on. One of these years, I'm going to remember to bring, like, some active-canceling headphones. I probably should get some. Or at least bring my normal Bluetooth little earphones to put in to help damp down the noise. Yeah, on Saturday, after getting in through the rain, I kept my hood up mostly because it actually – well, my hoodie because it actually filtered some of the sound down. So it didn't feel as bad as it had – probably, again, because the games are so spaced. Right. But let me – it's still – all right. I don't know who it is.
    15:12
    Oh, there's – it was in the circle of awesome. It was beautiful. It was like a totally hand-painted Batman Forever. Oh, it was. It was lovely. But guys, all of you who own Batman Forevers, why is it the loudest game? like it always is the loudest game i always hear batman forever it's like it it was louder i guess there was a tna at the show i never actually saw it but normally i could hear tna but i think batman forever cancel it out because batman forever is the loudest game we were standing in line for looney tunes and yes and and a we we picked the wrong line we picked the looney tunes line because we didn't know he was so unassuming guys to sit in their hands in his jacket pocket yeah yeah we we walked up there's one guy who's on ball two he's playing looney tunes all right cool and then there's another single guy behind him cool uh we'll stand behind that guy i did not realize we were standing behind like like a top five percent player uh because uh his ball one lasted like the length of our first four walls put together uh and it just got bad uh i mean not bad i mean it was fine it was just one of those where you're in line you're like oh it's like choosing this what you think is going to be the short line at the grocery store yeah and then it turns out grandma's trying to write her check but she forgot her glasses and she can't read and she can't spell her own name anymore so uh it turned into a much longer thing but we were also the closest one to that batman forever and we had problems talking because that forever was so loud yeah so you brought up looney tunes uh what what'd you think of that when we did finally get to play i mean i was much happier with it than i was scooby-doo it i i did not go in expecting anything special i've not been very happy with any of the spooky games lately uh but i actually didn't have any problems with like huge problems with looney tunes um i it didn't have any of the things that annoyed me like scooby-doo did uh it shot all right um for the i mean it was i i it's not it's not my best in show but it is much better than i expected it to be i i i did like how straightforward it seemed to be and i it just seemed like you do these shots you get your mo i don know it just It seemed pretty intuitive maybe would be the way I would phrase it It looks good The art package and all that looks really really nice if you into Looney Tunes Layout-wise, this is a forgiving player, I would say. Well, I was not like the person in front of us. I think I came up about 40 million points short of where his score was. I did feel like I had a very long game.
    18:01
    And I note that in particular when it's the first time I've played a game. Now, I had that experience with – it wasn't as bad as my Scooby-Doo experience with Spooky last TPF where I was like, maybe I should just deliberately drain. There is a lot of people behind me. But that's the lower part of the play field. I never got comfortable with – and I remember you on Looney Tunes had noted you never really got comfortable with where the shots were on the flippers. I did on the lower but not the upper two flippers. Well, and we have to be honest that saying all of that, halfway through ball two, the upper flippers on the ballooning tunes we were playing failed. No, that was on Texas Chainsaw. That's the same layout. Because I was going to jump to that and say we actually – we weren't sure we were going to play Texas because the lines were all so long on that, and it's the same layout. But on Saturday, the lines were not bad on Texas Chainsaw when we went to it. So we did get in line, and we played it. and i would i would note i've seen texas chainsaw massacre you gotta be a hardcore fan are like the art is better on looney tunes by far just being like i don't care about either of these things but just the art is so much nicer i don't just mean like in a creepy way i just be like oh yeah you're looking at like ground beef and stuff with texas which fits the theme it's just looney tunes i just feel as a more visually appealing art package um however i did find the rules seemed a lot more complicated on texas chainsaw and it's two different rules teams that was the one thing that was making me think maybe i should play both but i wasn't sure i'd get in deep enough to really feel a difference in the rules but but there seemed to be like do you want to you know choose grandpa or choose yeah or choose leatherface or whatnot and like it was and it just felt like it changed things up. Looney Tunes seemed very like 90s rules straightforward and Texas Chainsaw seemed much more, let's use all these particular things and get this stuff going. And Joel Engelberth from Triple Dream Pinball Podcast, we were playing with him on Texas. And so he's like, he's played this before. So he's got like, oh yeah, these are these little tricks on the rules and stuff that Ben Heck has programmed into it. But as you noted, we ran into a flipper option. Now it actually hit me first. Right. So actually, Joel was over talking to us. We had already he had come up to us while we were playing. So we were in a two player game and I was player one and I started a mode. I don't remember what mode. It doesn't matter. The upper flippers were no longer flipping. I thought that was the mode because they were working up until that point and I hadn't noticed them cut out before the mode started. So anyway, I anyway, I failed the mode. I drained. I'm out. Tony goes up and I'm talking to Joel and then I look over and Tony's flipping, but his upper flippers aren't moving at all. And, and so, so yes, I, um, uh, and some of those shots really need those upper flippers to work. Cause yeah, that was cause when I, when I started with that ball, I'm playing and it's like, I was flipping up here a little bit ago and they're just gone now. Now, I don't know if this was the Spooky's reputation for build quality and a build thing happened or if it was a software thing that happened. Because someone else had told me that there are a lot of modes that got put in in time for TPF, but they weren't really tested. That wasn't someone with a company, but someone who purportedly talked to someone on the programming team, who I believe. So given that, it just – unfortunately, that didn't leave a terrible impression, but it kind of left the stereotypical impression of, oh, yes, it's a spooky. It's not going to work right. Right. Yeah, and I will say out of the two, I don't think I'd ever buy a Texas Chainsaw Massacre. No, I mean, the one thing is the ideas behind the in a homeowner environment. I think I might have more fun with Texas rules and that would probably be enough on location. I would easily say get a Looney Tunes if you're going to get one of these two. And like for competitive reasons, I would rather I'm at the point. This is the this is where the Travis Murray's of the world with the sigree. And I'll be like, you just need to, you know, if you want to be committed, you know, and learn all this and then do it and learn all this. It's not that hard. but sometimes I just like being able to walk up and easily understand a game and, and do that. And I'm not in the home setting. Totally different. I'm all for, let me memorize like, uh, we're doing when I need to add in tank multi-ball and Godzilla and let's get the ramp ready and go into guy again. So I can ramp out and also stack my jets and hopefully have road and a two X. Okay. I, yeah. In the home environment. Sure. I'll nerd out like that when I want to go and play on location. I'm kind of like, I want 90s rules. So that's sort of where Looney Tunes is for me. Looney Tunes is 90 rules. Texas is modern rules. But Looney is a much better looking game in general. So again, it kind of depends what you're going for as a collector. I didn't love either of them. But like you, this was a huge layout improvement for me. this is the best layout out of spooky since alice cooper i think yeah i think i think that's i mean you might be able to argue maybe rick and morty rick and morty's i don't know rick and morty's clunky i alice cooper might kind of be clunky as well to be fair but it it's meant to be weird this is their most traditional layout in a long time yeah and uh and i think that will i think that will help them out but i can't imagine looking at texas i'm just like there ain't gonna be a lot of people buying texas chainsaw massacre this game is too texas chainsaw for people so i mean and it depends because i understand the whole horror there's a big horror community i just i i don't know how big texas chainsaw is in that horror community compared to a lot of other titles that I can think of.
    24:11
    Yeah, it's tough to say. Now, here is a game I didn't even think about playing until we were with Joel, talking to Joel, and he was like, you and I had never played Venom. Which is valid. Yeah, and so it's like, is there a Venom here? Oh yeah, Marco has a Venom. So we went over and played Venom, and he made sure, he's like, don't play the pro. It's like, okay, so we did not play the pro. We obey. When we are instructed, we obey. it's like you need to play the premium that's to get the proper experience what were your thoughts on venom oh dear you open with the side it's it wasn't i mean uh i'm going to leave aside the insider connected like memorization stuff for a minute and just talk about playing it it's hard at least there were times so i feel like some of the timeouts on the shot where you make a shot and you have to make another shot rapidly enough uh i feel like the timing on that might be a little short for people at my skill level okay i i i was having issues where i sometimes i was hitting them because there were a couple i had a couple shots ago where i made the shot to activate the the the next hurry up target shot and um it expired before the ball ever returned to a flipper So I never had a chance to make the shot. It just wasn't even possible.
    25:38
    And I find that annoying. But overall, it didn't do anything for me. I didn't really enjoy it that much.
    25:53
    Joel kind of talked us through a lot of the more in-depth and the insider-connected stuff where it remembers your – Yeah, because he was like level 56 or something. Yeah, and it remembers what you've done, and you can unlock characters. That if you go to another machine, because it remembers when you blip yourself in, it'll unlock those characters. And that kind of progression that you can do that's actually tied, I find that as an interesting concept.
    26:18
    And I can see where that could make some changes and make the game more fun. Except for I could also see where it could make the game much more annoying when you're playing in a group setting. because you're like, oh, look at all this cool stuff I'm doing and all these giant things, all these cool characters I have. Yeah, he was Cindy at Hulk. He could smash. Yeah, and then he'd be like, I've got nothing special. But, I mean, that's neither really here or there. I mean, that just depends. Everyone's going to be a little different on that one. I did think it was interesting. He was saying that as you play the game and you're scanned in and you get more experienced, the game actually gets harder. It has some things where they reduce how much time you have to complete some stuff compared to before, which I think is an interesting way to kind of semi-balance a more experienced player and a less experienced player using the Insider.
    27:17
    But yeah, it didn't really do anything super special for me. I did enjoy it. But after playing it, it was really neat to do the character swaps at the start and then see the play field layout just rapidly change to accommodate what that was going to be. And it definitely sort of, to me, begged the question, why did they make a pro if they couldn't have any of that in there? Because I'm not sure how fun it is when all of a sudden the rules change and that's it. I mean, I get it. And they probably did internally argue, well, we do rules changes all the time on games. like Turtles and everything else, and the layout stays the same. But comparatively, it's a bad comparison. It makes the Pro look very cheap. It does. And so that's why I had no interest in going over and trying it. So I thought that was very neat. The layout is incredibly basic, though. I stand by, I think, one of my early statements when we covered it, when it was revealed, was the fanniest fan to ever fan, and it is. The quick ball release does kind of help keep things moving along, but at least the game we played, it wasn't like a particularly brutal fast release where it's just like a Scott Denise-y fire in the ball back at you, TNA or Final Resistance style. It wasn't anything like that. So my takeaway was there was so much to do and explore in the leveling and all of that. I think in a home environment, Venom Premium or LE would be an excellent game. And there's a lot to really explore there. Location-wise, probably not. I think the hope for location would be more around the theme.
    29:02
    I don't know. I mean, the ability to level and go back and progress could keep people dropping quarters in if they get really addicted to it. But, again, if you're not in the home environment, I don't know how many people want Null to get shorter and shorter time as they play. I mean, I'm not sure. I like the idea of the game because I think there was a lot of experimentation that happened in the rule set and I've never seen anything at all like it of all the games we played, I think the depth there in the rules is probably the strongest, that's a tough thing to say because there's so many ways you could measure down but yeah, it's not a game that I was okay with it, but it didn't leave a strong impression like i didn't i didn't enjoy the layout as much as elton john i didn't uh i didn't enjoy the gameplay as much as jaws it's kind of like um i'm not a big venom fan like i don't read the comics so and didn't ever so and it's all comic style so it's really just the neatness of the rules is the one thing really going for it and there are other games that have more than one thing going for it so i would never buy it i guess it's my long story no and it makes that makes sense i just don't yeah i just don't see myself i would think of there's a lot of games out there that i would buy first yeah maybe that's a better way to phrase it but i think it's i mean it played well i think if i had more time on it i probably like it more uh and we probably have one on location in Kansas City. I just haven't gotten to it. Yeah. If that's the case. That was like it was with Jaws because Jaws is in a location. I know where it's at. It's in two now. We've got it in a couple. But when I went to play it, I didn't realize at the time that they were closed on Mondays. So I'm like, oh, look. It's like, they're closed. Oops.
    31:00
    So, oh, I mentioned Scott Denise. We talked a little about Rick and Morty, and I'd made a mention of Final Resistance. So we did play Princess Bride. Actually, we played it a couple of times. We played it a couple of times. So Princess Bride, a license I like a lot better than Labyrinth. And you are the opposite. I'm the opposite. I think I prefer Labyrinth as a license better. There's nothing that I'm not a Princess Bride hater. I enjoy the Princess Bride. Yeah, bear in mind, they'll write into your collective games podcast at gmail.com. I really enjoy the Princess Bride. There's a lot of good things. It's very quotable. uh labyrinth is just one of those kind of fun uh crazy movies that i really enjoy okay well uh you spoke very very highly about labyrinth in terms of the gameplay the integration the look of the whole thing even when it's turned off what were your thoughts about princess bride i think princess Bride is the best P3 game I've played since Final Resistance.
    32:01
    Okay. That's fair. So, we played this Friday. Wasn't much of a line wait on Friday, so Tony and I played it, and then on Saturday, we did a four-player game, including Joel and Travis Murray, who is an incredibly skilled player, who did put on a bit of a clinic i knew it would be bad when he said i'll go last yes but i think he probably would have told us that for any game he would play with us out of kindness he would say true but it was interesting to watch because we were actually on the one where they had a a camera over the playfield well now the first day the camera was over a different game i i know because you told me after i had a very long game actually i had a long game both times you did just compared to Travis, I didn't. Right. Because the first time, I'm just saying, they moved the camera over to my game while I was playing it so that people could see some stuff happen. Yeah. You keep telling yourself that. I think you told me that's what happened because I didn't know they moved the camera. No, no, they moved the camera. I was just telling you to keep telling yourself that's the reason. I did it for that reason, not because the screen, the monitor, was over the middle game, and I was on the middle game, and it was weird to have the camera over the not-middle game, and then you didn't realize who you were watching. I'm not sure that had nothing to do with it. It was all about your skill. It was all about multiball that I had. So anyway, I don't – you know, it's always tough to rank all the P3 games. Overall, I think it's a good game. It is. Like it doesn't feel weird, overly weird. Like it's – the layout is, as I noted, given the ball lengths, It's kind of like how it was for me with Looney Tunes.
    33:53
    It's a long player. It looked like it was going to be a long player to me. I probably, like ranking-wise, I liked Heist. I'd say I probably liked Heist, Weird Al, and Final Resistance all more than Prince of Bride. Bride would probably be my fourth. I'd put it in the exact same place. So given all that, it seemed pretty approachable in terms of the lighting telling you the shots to do, the screen. It has very descriptive – I mean, they have that big monitor, so they're able to do a lot of descriptive stuff. You could hear it lots and lots and lots of the movie. So if you love the movie, there are tons of clips that are being incorporated. The whole integration is really, really good. It is. I definitely felt that the decision to keep it static, kind of like Scott did with Final Resistance, but instead of making it look like a play field, they made it look like a map. It felt like there wasn't a lot that screen was doing aside from showing you movie clips and then having a book with the rules pop up. It felt like they really didn't lean into the display. And maybe that – given the reaction to Final Resistance, I think I get why they did it. It makes sense except they just but they chose not to make it look like a play field Which I think hurt it And it fine You don really the thing that it did to me is it called out just how unimportant the first two thirds of the, of the play field are on it because it's just a massive display of the movie and a massive display of the rules and everything else is just kind of, I mean, that's not much else to see until you get to the module. And then the module was attractive. It actually looked a lot better to me than it did in the photos. Yeah, I think in person it looks better. And they did do some interesting things with it overall. It does have the P3 issue that I've had with every P3 game I've ever played, which is with the little triple button on the side using multiples. They always feel I have big hands, but it still feels too spaced out for me. Like I have to reach for it. But I think that's something that I could get over if I played one a lot more, probably. I'd probably get used to it.
    36:20
    But I'm definitely having the top and bottom flippers on different buttons. I would have to get used to it. I wasn't a fan, but I'm not willing to, like, super down check it because it's something you can use. I mean, it's always been the case for them. And as I believe has been noted by them repeatedly, you can go into the settings and configure it so that one button will flip the flippers, all the flippers. Though they won't stage flip. These aren't leaf switched in that way. So it kind of is like, well, if you're blocking your shot because you're flipping and not getting the hand off the button quick enough. Yeah. The button thing, that's been true for all of them. I quit using the top. I don't like how I have to hold my hands because I have to, I do middle finger flip normally, which if that's not your default, I don't, I, it's gotta be really hard. I guess you go into the settings and see if you can just reassign the buttons or something because, uh, the way it's set up, your index fingers need to be the upper flippers and the, and your middle fingers need to be the lower flippers. Right. And, uh, the, yeah, the second time I played, I was just like, I'm not going to use the upper flippers period. Yeah. Well, And in this game, to be fair, my score is even higher. I mean, there's one shot on the right that Joel pointed out to me that I'm not sure you can make from the lower left flipper, that you might need the upper left flipper. That was the only shot that really stood out that you could not, possibly, could not access from the lower flippers. Now, they did do something interesting that we saw, thanks to Travis, in the Princess Bride movie. there's the whole sword fight scene where they start off left-handed switch to right hand all that stuff and they did do an interesting thing uh where in that mode when it was left-handed you controlled the flippers with just your left hand the main button operated the left flipper what was the left upper flipper operated the right lower flipper uh and then it switched to the other side yeah uh and that is an interesting integration and i thought that was neat and there was no way i would successfully uh be able to play like that it would totally destroy me and and travis was absolutely schooling us uh in how to play doing that when when he's using one hand to do tap passes and stuff and i'm sitting here going ah so that's what practice looks that's what practice Yeah, exactly. Oh, so this is what skill lets you do. Wow. Yeah.
    39:01
    Now, I do want to know, excellent theme. That's an excellent theme integration. Oh, that is amazing. So I don't want to downplay it. But did we not see that on Oktoberfest? They set it up so that there was that. I think it was just on the left-hand side. They had the extra button. In their instance, because it was Oktoberfest, so you could have a beer in one hand and play pinball in the other. So I'm just kind of like, I've seen it before, but not integrated in a logical way. That was just a weird Oktoberfest thing. That being said, it amused me because I think he was just concentrating. But Travis's face, because I think Colin, who was one of the guys who worked on the game, was explaining what was going on and how the mode was working. It was hard to hear, but I was kind of hearing that. But Travis's face was kind of – gave me the impression of, oh, one-handed play. How quaint.
    39:55
    Yeah. What's next? Card tricks? As you noted, it was just like, whatever. Yeah, yeah. It was 100% like taken to school, just like, okay, so. So it's like in those movies where you see, like, the young learners practicing their karate and stuff. And then a bad guy shows up and the master, who's always been nice and kind and gentle, steps out and is just a monster and wipes out, like, 40 guys. That's what it felt like. Like, we were the little kids going, I like pinball. Pinball's fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm so good. And then Travis walked up and then just like slaughtered an army of orcs with like a finger.
    40:41
    That's what it felt like. And it was awesome. I had a ton of fun. We got to see a lot of things with that game that I can 100% guarantee we wouldn't have seen just you and me playing. Oh, yes. No, that's the nice thing about playing with someone who's a top 100 player. Yes.
    40:58
    They have such a high ceiling. uh speaking of high ceilings we did play ninja eclipse we never this was our first time it was a whitewood last tpf and i remember walking up and looking at it and saying i will not play this in this state it will leave a terrible impression on me i want to see it further along and i heard that it was at expo last year and it was further along and there was a lot of feedback which from hearing from others was listened to and changes were made and so we got to try it and you know what they they have they have something there they do it's it's still this is turner pinball by the way the engine eclipse their first game they bought a lot of the deeper assets right it still feels like it needs a lot of polish but based upon what i'd heard from expo when we went up to it, I was like, okay, well, it's here. We'll play it. But it actually had a couple shots that I really enjoyed. It had some really interesting ideas. And I can see a lot of potential from it. And based upon what I'd heard from Expo to now, they've already made a significant amount of changes. I mean, it was, I think, and again, this is very subjective, but that's why you listen to us. I felt it was the most I'm going to use the word creative. Creative layout of all of the quote-unquote new games. Not County Homebrew, commercial new games. In the sense that you look at this layout, and it doesn't really look like anything else that I've seen before. I can look at Princess Bride. It's not a fan layout, but it's fan-ish. It's got the upper flippers, but otherwise the shots are all laid out in that particular sort of way. Elton John looks a lot like, again, a Steve Ritchie design. You can kind of see it. And this doesn't have that feel because it's probably because it's got different designers. So, you know, what you would expect. Not all of the shots felt good, though. Some of them, it's hard. The game is a hard player. It's got like a scoop firing to scoop thing that's really like neat visually. But again, that sort of thing, I like seeing it the first time. But it gives me kind of like Flight 2000 vibes where do we want a fourth of the game dedicated to this like intricate ball lock system, which is visually very satisfying and then very time-consuming as you go we played a flight 2000 and i don't know how many times i fired off that thing without it being ready for multi-ball i think six but um but yeah it like as a concept sometimes like that that freshness to it i think that's going to be really appealing to a lot of people and one of the guys who was working on the game did come up and talk to us while we were playing and a little bit afterwards sort of explain like i was also hearing them sometimes talk with other people about how it's like well you know we you know this is something we did because and this rule set because we think this would be like how a ninja would respond to this or trying to like make you feel like you're being a ninja with certain decisions like certain shots need to be really precise or really fast or you get past these things and and go for these particular shots and it's like so they're really trying to integrate the theme the struggle of course is ninja eclipse is not a good theme it's i get because it's not licensed and i gotta i gotta hold them to the same standard i hold everyone else right like as a startup company and i've i've i didn't hear this from from turner who i saw him around i didn't talk with didn't talk with him myself but i think he's he's i've talked to others who talked to him and there's been a lot of the because he's got like the deep root stuff he's got like i think the deep root licenses are the assets including the games they were working on and some people have asked why aren't you doing one of those things like why aren't you doing hypothetical like food truck or whatever and he's like i i want to show that we can do this not like riding on what coattails were still left from deep root like i want that i wanted the tech and stuff they had but i don't want to be known for just like using something that there was some hype for out of them to launch the company and i i get that i get that but i don't even think that But that's not this. The problem is when you're new and you're trying to get people to trust you as a company, getting hype for the game is the hardest thing. And the pricing, I think, on this game is now in a realm where I think it's priced around a Stern Pro. Yeah, they changed the pricing. Yeah, they adjusted that based off the feedback. So there's an opportunity there to be very competitive. It's going to be really hard with an unlicensed thing. And ninjas are generically popular, or they were, with people, but I don't know that they are with pinball people. It's just kind of like a – I just don't think it's a – Pinball people are more pirate people. Yeah, that's probably the thing. Ninjas versus pirates might have been – because at least then people might think you were associated with the video games.
    46:03
    I think there are more than one. None of them I don't think were any good either, though. I don't know. It's – again, if he can get enough people to play it at the shows, that might be enough to get – I don't know how many buyers he needs. Right. Doing the Denise-y thing TNA style and getting just people hands-on with it can work. If they can get it to enough shows, I could see him selling 500 units. Sure. But if you want to sell 1,000 units, I don't think you can do it with this theme. I just don't know what he needs out of it. But it is interesting. There's creativity behind it. But I think it's the same guy who – was it the same guy who did the Looney Tunes art package? Did their art package or something? I don't remember. Maybe I'm thinking of a different game. The guy – oh, they said he did an art – I don't remember which art package. But it's not his first art package. Right. So, I mean, it's different. The game is different. But we did have an issue. We did. So when I was playing, I put the ball in the scoop, in a scoop. and then the game just sat there. And then I'm like, okay. I took my hands off. I shook it a little bit. Didn't do anything. So I'm like, all right, we'll just wait for ball search.
    47:16
    I'm not sure there was a ball search. Guy came up and turned off the game and turned it back on and said that it wasn't the Switch, that it's a software thing. And they were making notes and all that. So it's not in finished state yet. No. Even though visually they had art on the play field and all that. But as unlicensed, if you're going to do an unlicensed theme, this one was definitely better than some barbecue, which I think is the last new game that we haven't covered. I believe so. When we went in on Friday, we were able to walk right up and play barbecue. We did not run in through the doors. There was not a line. We played barbecue more than once. Yes, we did. Because we are fair. here on Eclectic Gamers. You and I played it on Friday, and then you and I played it with Joel on Saturday.
    48:13
    I'll let you start, Tony, because you're basically a barbecue expert. You've had many different types of barbecue in your life.
    48:21
    You've also played a lot of pinball. Yes, that's the nice one. I've led into this saying that I think Ninja Eclipse is a better game.
    48:31
    You're right. I think Ninja Eclipse is a better game. I was not impressed by Barbecue at all. At all. Was there anything you liked about the Barbecue game? I'm not one of those people who's against the concept of a non-licensed game based around something like Diner and stuff like that. I'm okay with the idea. I just, like you, I don't think a non-licensed game is going to cut it in this day and age. I think as much as people cry that they want non-licensed themes, the age of the non-licensed theme is over.
    49:10
    You're never going to get a good amount of sales off of it. I feel like they had a couple good ideas in there, but a lot of it didn't hit.
    49:23
    Like they had the screen in the play field. Right, kind of highway pinball style. For those of you not sure what Tony means.
    49:33
    Which I liked that in Highway Pinball. I like that here. I like that it helps with not having to look up to the back box to see stuff or anything.
    49:46
    But I feel like the actual everything they were playing didn't do it. It felt like it was a wasted good idea. I didn't feel like it really added anything in this situation it's a thing I've seen done in the past and liked how it worked but here it didn't feel like it added anything and it just wasn't very satisfying the shots didn't feel very satisfying and just overall the game didn't really do anything for me yeah I wish I could say something but alright I thought that their saucer lock system worked pretty well like the little they were when i saw them i thought these look a little small i'm not sure how this is going to work but they all seem to function fine for me in terms of like locking the ball i didn't have reject issues it rolls up a little cut in lane and then rolls back and triggers so people will get credit for points and stuff still able to use the shots when the ball's locked that is that that was a cool feature that was it almost acts like a uh like a newton ball once it's in place yeah so that part actually i thought worked really well the uh the little uh things that they use that are like a substitute for the mushroom pop, mushroom bumpers. They don't look nearly as cool as mushroom bumpers, but they do work. Yes. And I did see them get side, like, the value to those versus stand-ups is basically you can hit them from another direction. Now, I think maybe in the materials they advertise that they're 360 switches, but none of them are accessible from a 360-degree position. They're not, like, out in the open. Right. They're more, like, accessible, like, 180 to maybe 200 degrees. I'm not quite sure. It depends on which one because there were a couple. Yeah, one of them I would say was probably around 270. It could be, but I don't – where it was, I'm like, I'm not sure the ball coming out of the orbit is ever going to actually touch it. So I'm being a little unfair in the sense that technically you're right. It was exposed much bigger than I'm – I was factoring in where I think the ball might actually practically come at it from. But who knows? Pinball is random. Right, and mushroom pops are one of those classic items in pinball that has vanished. that I like on I really associate them with things like Playmatic, like European manufacturers with the mushrooms. the game, it didn't help that one of them was right beside Hot Wheels. And it's like, you can see I can't look at it and then look over at Hot Wheels and go, this was Barry's layout. I don't see – and I'm not saying they said it was Barry's layout, but they talk about how it was like his last original design. I'm like maybe the theme, maybe some of the mechanics, like maybe the lock system, but the layout looks a lot like a baby-fied Hot Wheels. Now, I say it like – why do I say baby-fied? Well, one, because I have to say baby's first everything. But the other thing is like the RPM targets, which are so key, probably too key to Hot Wheels scoring. They are because we haven't played Hot Wheels after later in the show. They stacked where the R is further up and then there the P and the M They actually kind of hard to hit all of those Now those are replaced with the pit bank which are just simple easy shot straight line Yeah So I didn know that Hot Wheels needed to be easier but there was that decision They don't have the Vuck that does the little Hot Wheels ramp up onto the little track that shoots onto the ramp and then feeds to the left flipper on barbecue, which, okay, it wouldn't make sense there, but I think it was to accommodate some of their other stuff. So it's sort of like the back center is different, a little different. Otherwise, it feels very, very, very samey. So you don't necessarily, if you've played Hot Wheels, you're probably, if you come up to this, it's not going to be like Texas Chainsaw Layout versus Looney Tunes Layout, which are the same layouts with just different rule sets. It's more than that, but it's not much more. Or that was my impression. They share a lot of DNA. I forgot. We actually played this game three times. The first time I actually – so the first two games we played on the same machine, which I had a very long – I had a very long ball, and then I had a very long game. The long ball – the game reset after my ball drained. Right. It rebooted. Yeah, it just turned off. It turned off and it did a reboot. And I was like, okay, that's not a good sign. um the third game we played uh second full game was on a different machine which did seem to be set up harder uh at least i didn't do as well that time but it's the shots just kind of feel like i'm either going for saucers or i'm going for ramps i guess that's about it just it didn't shoot bad. It didn't feel overly clunky or anything. It just didn't feel inspired. Also, I feel like both machines we played,
    54:50
    the flippers felt weak. And again, that could be show power. That could be show power. There's a lot of possible reasons for it. But it does not help make a favorable impression on the game. No, but it was difficult to get up the ramp sometimes. Not impossible. Like there were other games there where it was like, this is not playing right. Right. I'm looking over at you, upper flipper on high speed.
    55:14
    Yeah. Couldn't even play that game. I think something went wrong with the coil stoppers or the coil sleeve on that game. But the, anyway, the art is not good.
    55:30
    No. It's super not good. I and I remember the flyer and stuff for the game and I don't like when I was playing I obviously I can't watch the screen very much other than a little baby screen in the in the play field. I didn't like where where are all the hot like there's hot rods in the art. They promoted like it's barbecue and hot rods, but everything about the game seems barbecue like pit spell pit spell barbecue, which Joel not to steal Joel's thunder poor poor Joel. He could not get past that. When you read the drops on the left, it's QBB from top to bottom. And he's like, why is it not going BBQ? Why is it going QBB? Now, in American Pinball's defense, I sent him a photo of Barakora. And yes, Kora spells down on the right, but where you'd read top down. But Barra is bottom up, and they're not angled. It's like a straight vertical line. So I'm like, it's 50% approved by Barra Corp. So this is the best I can do. Right, but there's nothing down the right side to spell. Look, that's why I only said 50% approved because I don't have the other side to argue with the barbecue. It's like – because he's like, who reads from the bottom up?
    56:44
    Harkonnens. I told him maybe in Sanskrit. I don't know because I don't know. There's probably nothing. I don't know.
    56:54
    Anyway, the video screen, the clips of meat cooking. All right. That stuff, and I'm not joking, would have been right at home in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre game. In fact, I think it's creepier than like the ground beef. We later played the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And I'm seeing like the ground beef and the packet thing. And I'm like, they should be doing the barbecue grill thing. That stuff, the juices squirting on the chicken. Tony already is ranting because we started the game, the first two games, and it's going all about like grilled chicken. And he's like, what sort of barbecue is this? Chicken. He was like really, really judgmental. That was the Kansas City coming out of it. That was the Kansas City. But they're showing, oh, look, it's chicken. And it's just the same like eight images of chicken going over and over again. With Jews like squirting in from the side. Like squirting out. And it's like, oh, look, this chicken's like really burned on one side. And then there's just stuff. And then when we played later, it was like brisket. And so I just got to see the same image over and over again of a knife just going cut, cut, cut through brisket. And it's like, it's just like. Yes. And it would have been fine if there had been more than like three shots, like three images. Images, yeah, yeah. But it just kept repeating those three images just over and over and over again. I will say, it's a barbecue theme. In a barbecue restaurant, it would probably do great on location. I just can't imagine very many barbecue restaurants needing or wanting a pin, given how barbecue restaurants work. I can't imagine playing a pin at a barbecue restaurant. Can you imagine the sticky and the barbecue sauce and the rib fingers all over it? You didn't hear the last pinball show episode where – so Zach kind of brought that up about – he was saying how he knows they were – that's what they're thinking is that they're going to sell it to barbecue restaurants. I'm like, let me – Indiana boy. Let me explain to you how barbecue actually works. These restaurants, it's not like a pizza place where you're sitting there waiting for your food to be made, so you go up with your clean hands and you play the game. People wait in line, instantly get their food, eat, and leave. It's not a model where you sit around because sitting around is time you have to be in line to put your order in because it's a barbecue place, and it's super popular because you're in Kansas City. And if you're not a good barbecue place, you do not endure. We have no need for you. I mean, case in point. Tell them about the case. There's a wonderful barbecue place called Slaps Barbecue just down the street from the 403 Club. And that would be a perfect place, you would think, because Slaps, Pinball Slap Save, you see? Yeah, right. And it's just down the street from the 403 Club. And they have great barbecue. And when we go to the 403 Club, we never have Slaps Barbecue. Why? Because the tournament starts at like 5 o'clock. and that means if you're going to get the barbecue, it's either after the tournament started or immediately before the tournament started and they're sold out of all of the food by then because it's good barbecue and you can only do so much because you have to guess how much you're going to sell because you have to start cooking it 12, 13, 14, 16 hours before you open to sell it. So we have had times where people have left the tournament to go to slaps and they come back with a carton full of barbecue baked beans and some coleslaw because that's all that was left because everything else is sold out.
    60:39
    So in places like that, they could use space for another smoker or something. They don't need a pinball machine to keep people. It's not how barbecue works is what I'm saying. At least not in Kansas City. Maybe in these other places don't actually know how barbecue is supposed to work. that there's so many barbecue capitals around with their own, you know, the Carolina style, the Texas style. Even like when I was in New York, dinosaur barbecue in Syracuse, it wouldn't, they wouldn't want a pinball machine. It's just, I don't care about that part really. Other than like, it didn't seem, if that was truly the motivation, it would, it feel, it would feel to me like market research wasn't done because if that was the case, the market researcher would have probably said we should make a pizza themed pinball machine because that actually makes more sense for like people, going in and having to wait for the pizza to be made. Chicago-style deep dish in particular because it takes forever for them to make their casseroles that they call pizza.
    61:35
    Anyway, it was not good. It's just not a good experience. It was, of all the new stuff, I felt the most disappointing. Agreed.
    61:50
    Well, was there any other games or anything else from the show you wanted to hit on because that's all the new stuff i could remember that we went out of our way to ensure we played right um and we already talked about the layout changes that we like oh that's the other thing uh as part of the layout changes uh they put a lot of games and a lot of arcade games out in the hallway uh especially on the south and west side of it uh and i liked that because there was some stuff that was playable, like when we first got there, before the doors even opened originally on Friday, and it helped alleviate the congestion some. And also, they'd moved the gift shop thing from inside to outside in the spot where they moved it. I thought it worked really well. Yeah. Because it got it out. Because originally it was at the entrance, like inside the game room at the entrance and it was another part of the thing that had kind of slowed entry down i felt all of that worked a lot better uh so that was just one thing i'd forgotten about it felt like there were a lot more vendors this year oh and they did live music which we didn't stay for um uh let me i'm gonna give that and i'm gonna give that a miss it's i want to walk out of the game room and it not be loud. And now it's loud everywhere. No, that was on Friday night. They had some live music on Friday night out in the main area. And I can agree with you. It looked like we didn't go to the live music on Saturday night either, but it looked like later on there was some that was in the seminar room, which might be a better fit for it. Yeah, that's fine. I remember when Scott Denisey DJed in the seminar room, and it wasn't bad when you were outside. You could choose if you wanted to. But I will say on Friday night when we walked in, the people they had playing in the hallway area, I did like it. I liked the music. Oh, yeah, no, the music, even the loud music was fine. Yeah, yeah. It's just, and again, this might play back to my needing to get some better ear protection or any ear protection at all. Just because, like you said, coming from being in the room where it's so loud, normally when you walk out in the hallway, it's like, oh. oh, I realize how loud it was in there now because suddenly it's almost like deafening or deafeningly quiet. But even though there's still a lot of stuff going on, it's just so much quieter.
    64:21
    But that's definitely an interesting change that I don't necessarily think is a bad idea. I've been to plenty of conventions that especially at night they'll do dance raves and dance parties and DJs and stuff. Yeah, I don't mind them trying stuff. I just, for me, one of my biggest negatives for shows in general is I want to have break. And again, maybe I should just be using noise canceling or some earplugs or something. But I just, I need breaks from the noise. It's a cacophony of sound and it starts to grate on me. That's always been true for arcades for me. Yeah. I don't love that sound, all that chaos. Eventually, it starts to be a little overwhelming. so I always want to go out after a couple of hours at least and take a break and going out and then being hit by well-played but loud as heck music. I was just like, no, I was not in the mood to be blasted by more volume outside of that space. And to be fair, some of this is subjective because – It's all subjective. Well, I mean, yes, it's all subjective, but some of this definitely has to do with like Dennis and I, we're young. We joke about us being old men. But it's not that so much as it's just us like more old farm guy type stuff, I guess. I don't know. We're very much early to bed, early to rise type people.
    65:54
    But I remember when I was younger, I mean, I've been to plenty of conventions where I would spend the entire day at a convention. and then I would go into the dance hall where they're running a DJ or a rave or something, and I'd be there until 2 in the morning, and then I'd go back to the hotel and pass out until like 8 or 9 and come in.
    66:18
    That's not for me, but I don't want to take that away from other people because there's plenty of people, several of whom I've spoken to who are much older than you and I, who will go out and do that same type of thing, especially maybe not like day-to-day, but definitely on special events like this. So I think it's nice that they have stuff like that for people who are more into that. It's one of those things that maybe, I mean, if I didn't have my own personal medical stuff that, you know, I'm at that point where I take night meds. And, well, oh, look, my night meds make me sleepy. So that's why they're night meds and stuff like that. Maybe it would be less of a thing for me, but it's – I'm pretty happy with all – overall with the changes they made. Yeah, no. Except for locking the doors. Yes. Broadly speaking, I do think they've improved the show. The show is now so far ahead of Expo, it's not even funny.
    67:17
    But people keep saying, you need to go to Expo. Everybody wants us to go to Expo. Go back to Expo, Dennis. It's the industry show. I'm like, they've made improvements. Great. Well, TPF has made improvements now as well, some significant ones. The biggest complaint I've ever heard about TPF is it's like three people deep to play any game. But I'll tell you what, with the new layout, it's so much easier to walk around. And with Colorado Snowstorms, there were plenty of spaces for people to play. There was nothing. Other than the new stuff, nothing that I recall seeing was more than one person deep. And there were plenty of DMD era plus games that we were able to. We walked up to our granite was Led Zeppelin, but we walked up to Led Zeppelin. Right. There's no line for Led Zeppelin. I know that doesn't shock anyone, but I'm just saying it was there. It was there. Yeah. I did not once have to break out my patented, you know, pardon me. I'm not getting fresh on fat as I tried to squeeze through the barely spread apart groups of people because they were so tight. I bumped into one person and it was out in the hallway. Yeah. And that was it. Not in the game room. Because normally in the game room, it is a press. Yeah.
    68:28
    Now, there was some congestion still around those pinwheels near the doors, but I didn't have to run into anyone. I just had to – sometimes I have to wait and let some people through, you know, one-way traffic sort of thing where you alternate who gets to go through. But, well, that's all I have. I thought it was good. I just enjoy having a vacation, though. Yeah, it's nice. I mean, that's to be fair. I could probably just sit in the hotel room and have a good time. not as good of a time as actually getting to talk to people. We're so thankful for our friends that we meet up with every year. We were very sad because so many of our friends that we normally meet up with couldn't make it this year, which made things very sad. But also we had a chance to talk to several Patreon members, several people who listened to the show. And it's always a joy to talk to you in person and get to meet you. so thank you so much for taking the time to hunt us down and to spend some of your valuable TPF weekend play time with us yeah well if you want to reach out to us again you can email us eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com or you can go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast you can support us on patreon for as low as a dollar a month at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers we're on twitch and instagram as eclectic underscore gamers I did put a fair number of photos up on Facebook and the Instagram, nowhere near everything we did, but a bunch of different ones throughout the day. I tried. I did some attempts. I was wanting to do some live streaming, but I didn't have a mic because I didn't think about getting an external mic, and it was loud enough that without external mics, it wasn't going to work. So that's on my list that I've written down for next year is to get some external mics so I can hopefully do some live streaming at that point or at any other show we go to. Yeah. Well, anyway, we will be back to our normally scheduled approach in a couple of weeks. But until then, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See you.